Volume 23, Issue 1

In The Book on Adler and “Does a Human Being Have the Right to Let Himself Be Put to Death for the Truth,” Kierkegaard relies on logical reasoning and grammatical analysis in order to arrive at categorical normative conclusions against the use of religious belief and authority as a justification for ethical action. These arguments demonstrate that some types of moral knowledge can be arrived at through reason/logic, despite Kierkegaard’s efforts to separate the spheres of logic and existence. Kierkegaard thereby offers a strong critique of both moral exceptionalism and an ethics of conviction, a critique which—as the paper argues—is not incompatible with his existential and Christian ethics.

Do thought experiments provide “evidence” or just new mental frameworks? Current accounts of thought experiment turn to theories of reason and explanation rather than perception to explain how thought experiments work. I offer Kierkegaard’s own view of thought experiment, which is influenced by Kantian idealism rather than scientific empiricism. Drawing on philosophical research in aesthetics, I then show how all perception is a hybrid of sensory content and conceptual structures. On this Kantian-Kierkegaardian account, thought experiments help us see differently and gain new evidence through new kinds of experiences. My project retrieves the original Danish context of the term “thought experiment” [ Tankeexperiment ] and offers a new understanding of thought experiments as both sensory and conceptual, like perception itself.

This paper seeks to emphasize the connection between the concepts of anxiety and love as central phenomena in both Kierkegaard’s anthropology and ethics. Through the analysis of these two concepts, which Kierkegaard says “ to be in the ground of man, ” this paper argues that love or purity of heart should not be seen as an alternative or solution to anxiety or ambiguity. Instead, it suggests that understanding the two concepts jointly unveils how the single individual in subjectivity is in a constant flux between entangling oneself in a self-enclosed reserve on the one hand and opening up to the risks of being on 70,000 fathoms of water and yet being joyful on the other hand.

In this article, I present some reflections on the relationship between faith and knowledge in some of Kierkegaard’s works, primarily the Philosophical Fragments from 1844. I ask, what the project of Climacus consists in, and proceed to show that his opposition between faith and knowledge includes a number of decisions that are neither trivial nor particularly stable. By doing so, I want to present my own doubts as to whether the opposition between faith (by Climacus connected to history, becoming and paradox) and knowledge (connected to intellectual understanding, logic, timelessness and necessity) itself is reasonable. Based on the analysis, I argue that the texts authored by Climacus presuppose a substantial acquaintance with Christian thought and doctrine. This is only indirectly acknowledged by Climacus, and perhaps incompatible with his “thought-project.” Further, I discuss whether his denial of intellectual understanding of traditional Christian thought as a path to faith gives license to irrationalistic views.

This article will show that the relationship between divine grace and human activity in the Anti-Climacus works should be understood as an inverted dialectic. Although Anti-Climacus communicates the strictness of Christianity and the importance of undertaking the Christian task, I will argue that the Anti-Climacus works are ultimately aimed at deepening the reader’s understanding of grace. By exploring Anti-Climacus’ accounts of human imagination and will in coming to faith and in the task of following Christ, it becomes clear that human activity ultimately reveals human beings’ limitations and their dependence on grace.

In this paper, I reconstruct the understanding of selfhood in The Sickness unto Death. Using Leo Tolstoy’s character Ivan Ilyich, I argue that one can become alienated from oneself, although one is completely socially recognized. I critically engage this reconstruction with the theories of social agency of Axel Honneth and Robert Pippin and the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre. In the end, Anti-Climacus offers a notion of self-relating selfhood, which keeps a balance between the radical self-construction of Sartre and the theories of social dependency of Honneth and Pippin by understanding “God” as the necessity of having irreducibly personal reasons for becoming oneself.

Since the spirit of the time greatly influences the individual, Kierkegaard becomes increasingly aware of a socio-political environment in which a specific psychological character is molded, namely that of spiritlessness. Consequently, my primary objective in this paper will be to examine how this character manifests itself as a socio-psychological phenomenon in the age of leveling. How does spiritlessness constitute what we can call a pathology of normality as an emblematic despair of the age? In trying to answer this question I hope to clarify the reason for Kierkegaard’s increasingly problematic relation to his time. Since the intimate relationship between the concept of spiritlessness and leveling is given the most systematic account in Two Ages , most of the contributions in this paper will derive from this work.

Based on Kierkegaard’s interpretation of the maxim Love is the fulfillment of the law the present article seeks to show how consistent use of Kierkegaard’s terminology can aid in discovering the affirmative vision of Christianity implicitly contained in the philosopher’s religious writings. The starting point is in this case the Christian, spiritual account of love as established by God in every human being which fully manifests itself in the love for one’s neighbor. Only such a love is able to fulfill the law, that is, to make the temporal, human life entirely comprehensible and full of meaning. In order to approach this thesis properly, a differentiation between the possibility of love (law, nature) and the reality of love (love, eternity) is introduced. In effect, it is shown how the concepts of law and love, related to each other dialectically, are able to explain the fundamental relation of the temporal to the eternal in human existence. The pattern as to how this relation of love to the law should be played out is Jesus Christ, as one who, by his love for God, fulfilled the law of God’s love for man. In this act, he created for every human being the possibility of reconciliation with God and established Christianity as a positive religion, one in which there is actually no negative element in existence.

This article offers some personal reflections on the methodology of source-work research based on my experience with the production of Kierkegaard and his Danish Contemporaries , which constitutes volume 7 in the series, Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources. While source-work research is valuable in many cases for understanding Kierkegaard’s texts, I suggest that it does have limitations in the cases of some of Kierkegaard’s relations to his contemporary Danish authors.

Although the reader of Either/Or is intended to be, at the very least, somewhat ambivalent towards the Kierkegaardian pseudonym A, I argue that this character’s enthusiasm for all things Old Norse is shared by the Kierkegaard of this period. Kierkegaard’s interest in his region’s romantic past, however, would be short-lived. As his authorship progressed from the aesthetic to the religious, he found himself in conflict with another titan of the Danish Golden Age, Nicolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig. Since Grundtvig’s work dealt extensively with Norse mythology, Kierkegaard’s interest in the Norse cooled as his polemics against Grundtvig caught fire.

Although people have established rules to secure their life and values, they seem to search—and to have searched, time and again, in the past—for exceptions to those rules, and this for different purposes. The article compares two concepts of exception, suggested by Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling and by Garve in his Treatise on the Connection between Moral and Politics , respectively. A systematic-critical analysis shows certain intersections between their specific ways of handling the proposed exception. Garve’s concept of exception requires an original status naturalis between countries to increase happiness, and this is claimed by an established sovereign ruling with trust in God for his people. By contrast, the exception of Kierkegaard’s teleological suspension of the ethical turns out, precisely by being based on an individual’s relationship with God, to be incommensurable with purportedly universal social, ethical and political standards. This notwithstanding, both conceptions build on the notion of a human existence, which is subject to and ultimately dependent upon no one except the immortal God.

Appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, the present article belongs neither in the category of source-work studies nor in that of history of reception; for it aims, in a purely systematical fashion, to outline and at the same time facilitate and prepare for a dialogue between Karl Barth’s lesser-known brother, philosopher Heinrich Barth (1890 – 1965), and Kierkegaard: in particular, between their—as it turns out, strikingly similar or at least complementary—views on human existence as co -existence or as a fundamental form of (being in) community. Accordingly, the article does not rest content with, much less restrict itself to a mere comparison and/or paraphrase of the respective views. It much rather seeks to explore critically the key claims: (a) human existence is essentially co-existence or being in community; (b) co-existence is basically dialogical, hence language-dependent; (c) dialogues must be performed in order possibly to be successful; (d) their actual success is a matter of contingency and thus cannot be guaranteed by a mere fiat of the will.

The article compares Kierkegaard’s and Marcel’s comprehension of existence and communication of existence. With reference to the notion of existence, both authors (independently from each other) develop the idea of a second reflection that includes a theory of communication. But whereas Kierkegaard conceives communication strictly within a first person perspective, Marcel establishes a kind of second person perspective. For this reason and despite a strong common basis in their views, different aspects of communication of existence are put forward by them.

The question of Kierkegaard’s use of pseudonyms is an old one. This article does not aim to add any suggestions as to what may or may not have been the idea behind writing pseudonymously, or what kind of strategy it supposedly fulfilled. It aims, rather, at considering what it would mean to let the pseudonyms speak. The question then becomes: can we maintain the plurality of different perspectives, pronounced by all these voices, and still be able to maintain meaning? It is in lieu of this problem that some of Wittgenstein’s late notions of seeing and seeing aspects are introduced as a possible manner of retaining meaning, without insisting on meaning as such.

This article provides an English translation (with commentary) of Andreas Frederik Beck’s review of Kierkegaard’s On the Concept of Irony. Beck’s review is notable for its detailed, scholarly discussion of Kierkegaard’s text. While Beck draws attention to the unusual style of Kierkegaard’s dissertation and to Kierkegaard’s occasional use of irony, he does not treat the dissertation as itself ironic in overall form or intent. Kierkegaard’s response to this review, in which he makes the rare acknowledgement that Beck “has come quite close to having understood” him, provides indirect textual support for thinking that Beck is right in regarding Kierkegaard’s treatise on irony as a serious, scholarly work that is not itself essentially ironic.